Movie review: Keira Knightley blows the whistle in ‘Official Secrets’

Al Alexander More Content Now

Tuesday

Sep 3, 2019 at 9:57 AMSep 3, 2019 at 2:51 PM

Some stories are so compelling, even a trio of screenwriters can’t completely screw it up. Such is the fate of the whistle-blowing drama “Official Secrets.” Overwrought, overacted and utterly devoid of subtlety, Gavin Hood’s account of Britain’s version of Daniel Ellsberg is at once anger-inducing and somnambulant, a thrilling snooze about a valiant British woman’s failed attempt to prevent the deaths of more than 100,000 innocents at the hands of American and British troops sent to Iraq on a phony premise of weapons of mass destruction.

If your name is Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell or Blair, you’ll definitely want to stay away. You will not be favorably portrayed, despite appearing as yourselves via dozens of damning archival clips proving the lot of you to be either blatant lairs or gross incompetents. On the other hand, if your moniker is Katharine Gun, call all the relatives and promise them a heroic, albeit bland, depiction of a peon in the British military-industrial complex who dared spoil her superiors’ war party by speaking truth to power. Boy, could we Yanks use a person like her right now!

With a name like Gun, second only to Bond in British spy lore, you know her aim is true when she takes it upon herself - at great personal risk - to leak a top-secret memo about President George W. Bush and company’s plans to seek dirt on members of the United Nations Security Council in hopes of blackmailing them into voting for the U.S.-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. How Putin of them!

As history reminds, her efforts - and those of the muckrakers at the London Observer who published said memo on Page 1 right next to the story about the capture of the 9/11 mastermind in PAKISTAN! - were in vain. Hood and his co-screenwriters Greg and Sara Bernstein blame the flub on an overeager copy editor who ran the thing through spellcheck which changed “favorable” and “recognize” to their British spellings, causing the Drudge Report to declare the thing a fake. It wasn’t. Why is it always the copy editor’s fault? But I digress.

If you’re saying to yourself, “I never heard about this story before,” you’re not alone. I’m ashamed to admit I hadn’t, either. But if you’re among the uninformed, “Official Secrets” will have merit. If you do know the story or have read the book it’s based on, “The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War” by Marcia and Thomas Mitchell, consider yourself a prime candidate for residence in Sleepy Town.

Hood wastes no clichés while urging his fine ensemble led by Keira Knightley as Gun to speak every line of expository dialogue like they’re playing to the last row at Gillette Stadium. Why must we scream? Does he assume his audience is hard of hearing? Or, is it more likely he’s wagering the extra decibels will help disguise a buy-the-numbers script in which the only surprise arrives late in the third act. It’s a doozy, too - if you don’t know the outcome going in.

My major complaint, besides all the hammy acting - and annoying and intrusive score by Paul Hepker and Mark Kilian - is the movie’s discombobulated structure, as it tries to play the story from three perspectives all at the same time. One, of course, is about Gun and her internal fight over whether to stay mum or shout “corruption.” The second, and the film’s best, chronicles the coordinated efforts of the Observer staff to verify the memo and then weigh the consequences before setting it to print. Think Steven Spielberg’s “The Post.” Lastly, there’s Ralph Fiennes as the do-gooder, pro bono barrister looking for an innovative way to spring his client, who really isn’t his client because the Crown’s ridiculous Official Secrets Act doesn’t allow her counsel for reasons too bizarre to explain.

Like Knightley, Fiennes chews the foggy, buttoned-up London scenery, as do Matthew Goode, Matt Smith, Conleth Hill and Rhys Ifans as the Observer staffers working the story from both sides of the pond. Luckily, all are so good, you forgive them for occasionally going overboard. What you can’t forgive is the behavior of Messieurs Bush, Cheney, Powell and Blair for engaging in lies and deceit to push an illegal war based on the doubly false premise that Iraq was behind 9/11 and manufacturing WMDs. But that didn’t stop them from committing the most colossal SNAFU of the 21st century.

Because of President Donald Trump’s behavior - and the recent deaths of his parents - George W. Bush has been getting a bit of a historical makeover in which many are saying, “he wasn’t as bad - or evil - as we remembered.” Well, “Official Secrets” should but a stop to that nonsense. There’s blood on the hands of the 43rd president and his minions, and if nothing else, that makes Hood’s tale of government malfeasance vital and Gun’s heroics admirable. But it also causes you to lament that a tale of such gull and bravery isn’t allotted the full reverence it deserves.